Recently for English class, we had to finish the memoir/autobiography book called “Black Boy”, by Richard Wright, who tells us his story as a black boy in the Jim Crow South. It was a particularly interesting book that struck many chords in me, as a person trying to expand my worldview— and promptly after finishing it, I dropped my thoughts into a document that is pasted below.

I felt, in these final chapters, a brutal amount of frustration that I haven’t felt since the earlier chapters detailing Richard’s childhood.

In these chapters, Richard also provides a similar sentiment to mine; he speaks of the loneliness that washed over him when he was ostracized by the Communists, a loneliness he hadn’t even experienced in the South. I think it’s because he felt as if he had a grasp on the world, his own perspective on it, for the first time ever— and then suddenly his view was rejected by the people he thought would understand the most.

Or perhaps it’s because the Communists decided to dissolve the writing committee, taking apart a thing he had built himself up with as a writer and as a person. My frustration, at the very least, was rooted in these issues: the fact that Richard could never truly settle and find peace.

Maybe it’s naive for me to wish that on people, but I’m just a child, and I believe in things like life being easy and unconditional belonging. I wonder if Richard felt similarly in his childhood— seeing how he didn’t question things and just went with what he thought was right, I think he also believed in the same things I do, and judged things the same way I do.

The only difference is that he grew up much too fast, and realized the futility of trying to work against life’s currents. But even then, his other peers living in the Jim Crow South had to face something similar; they also learned very quickly that working against life’s struggles only brings pain, and in that separation, Richard is still distinct. It’s because even after realizing he had grown up and that he can’t always fit in, he still actively worked against what life handed him: saying his own speech during graduation, refusing to be the stereotypical black boy when working for white people, writing and reading despite not having to, resolving not to steal until he truly felt he had to. 

You know, a week or so back, my brother texted me at three in the morning, saying “i think growing up is realizing that belonging is conditional”, and after reading Black Boy, I think I finally understand that. Additionally, my brother has always said: “being an artist is never growing up”. And connecting those, I guess it’s intuitive to say that being an artist is never realizing that you must fit certain criteria to truly belong in the world. Richard, as an artist himself, seemed to have caught himself up in that dilemma; he kept questioning why people didn’t listen to him or understand him, even after stating himself that to advocate to others, you must learn to speak their language. Belonging is conditional. And I feel like Black Boy illustrates that rather well.

Also, more on the “not growing up” part— the more I think about it, the more textually evident it is how this is true. It’s like Richard never truly forgot, or at least left behind, his childhood. Chapters and events even decades back in his life are written with vivid detail (notably the “there was…” sections in chapters as early as the first one)… he never grew up. He is an artist, I suppose.  

With very long novels, I always feel a sense of settlement and peace whenever I finish reading it through. But with Black Boy, all I felt was desire— or maybe “hunger” is the right word for it. I can understand why this book was originally titled “American Hunger”.

But generally I just wanted to start thinking about my life more, or maybe start journaling, or start reading more novels or maybe write— or, at the basis of all these things, defy the hand that life dealt me.

I kept thinking about Black Boy. I was brushing my teeth and thinking about Black Boy. I was typing up my homework for Global and thinking thinking thinking. I realized, at some point during all this thinking, that the frustration I felt with Richard (the character— because at this point, Black Boy is no longer fully an autobiography but some mixture of memoir and fiction) was never truly directed at him.

I think it was directed at myself. When you grow attached to a person in fiction, chances are, you reflect the things they feel or the things you feel about them onto yourself. I was frustrated with myself; frustrated for not thinking more. Or for not knowing more, maybe. Not being courageous enough to spit in life’s face and tell it that I would take the hard path up the mountain so I could learn something.

I was talking with my mother today about life, direction, and meaning— the topic came up while we were talking about different lifetimes we could’ve had, like if my mother had stayed in China and I had been raised there instead, or if my family had never moved from suburban New York to the city.

At some point we came to the conclusion that life without direction but with meaning is much more valuable than a life with direction but without meaning; we listed examples. My mother’s meaning to life is her family. She certainly has direction— she has a stable income, my family is well-off, we live in a nice apartment in uptown Manhattan. But she did admit that if she had not cared so much about her family, there would be no reason for her to be alive. In the end, finding a meaning to life is the one path in the beauty of existence; and my brother has also said before that, at some point when contemplating existence, you always arrive at the question “what is the meaning to life?”

I suppose for Richard it’s to be able to tell his story, and also to find meaning. I believe that Black Boy is no longer a concrete autobiography; never was, never will be. I think I pointed this out earlier in this document, but the details in Black Boy are so intricate and vivid that it’s physically impossible for everything in the novel to be word-by-word perfectly accurate. Richard wrote Black Boy, and Wright gave it meaning; there is symbolism, there is craft, there are recurring symbols, there is commentary. Richard lost his direction in chapter twenty when he was kicked to the curb by his brethren, and he was forced to contemplate the meaning of life to him. And in the end, he arrived with the autobiography/memoir/introspection/fiction book that is Black Boy.

There is merit in remembering life. There is merit in thinking. It all seems so obvious, but the possibilities are just so endless, and that is the terrifying aspect of life; waking up and not knowing what will give you merit or suffering that day. It’s why, to me, my daily blog posts are so crucial. At this point, I don’t care if people don’t see this, or if they don’t understand anything I’m writing— because either way, they will find merit, similarly to how I already have.